This is a rush transcript and may contain minor errors and/or discrepancies from the audio. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

Announcer: Today on Family Talk.

Roger Marsh: Hello everyone, and welcome to Family Talk with your host, best-selling author and world-renown psychologist, Dr. James Dobson. I'm Roger Marsh, and today, we will bring you the remainder of a heart-wrenching conversation Dr. Dobson had with Pastor Frank and Sherri Pomeroy and David Colbath, all survivors of the church shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas.

Yesterday, they walked through the timeline of that traumatic day, and they discussed how the church came together through that crisis. Today, the Pomeroy's and David will talk about the post-traumatic stress that many survivors are suffering because of the shooting, and how the church, on the whole, is healing.

They will also share stories of the incredible revival they are experiencing in their community despite the violent culture that we live in today, and as was the case yesterday, there is a lot of content to get to, so let's get to part two of their conversation. We've titled it The Tragedy in Southerland Springs, the Survivor's Story on this edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk.

Dr. Dobson: How has the Christian community around the world dealt with you?

Frank Pomeroy: The first couple months, we were getting mail by the truck loads, literally. Cards from all around the world. We had to have our mail sent somewhere else and someone open it for us under cameras and such so everything got open properly, but it was just so overwhelming, so much mail, but the cards that we did have ... Candlelight service. What I did for our candlelight service Christmas Eve was ... One of the things I did, I read a card from somewhere so I worked my way all the way around the world.

We had cards from Europe, France, Ukraine, Australia, Asia, Japan, but still coming around the globe, and then I hit each state, or one state going across.

Dr. Dobson: In different languages?

Frank Pomeroy: They were written in English, but they came from all these foreign countries. They were cards that were, one, praying for us, too, if they weren't praying for us, they were expressing desire and concern, and the thing that really is amazing, Sherri pointed out to me that many of those cards and many of the emails that we get were people who said, "I am an atheist, but ..." Or, "I am agnostic, but ..." Or, "I have seen what y'all have gone through and the mercy and grace that y'all are applying there makes me rethink my attitudes."

Many, many times, many of these come in with that kind of testimony where I'm thinking that's what it's about. God is using this to work through those people, these agnostics and so-called atheists who maybe would've never slowed down, but because of the putting God forward and first, it's his majesty. I still say that God sent an angel that first morning, Monday morning that we were there, and I say that for this reason.

There was a gentleman there that nobody has been able to tell me who he is. We were there. He was a very tall, very tall black man, very dark complexion, and somehow, he was into the crime scene, and he came directly to Sherri and I, and he prayed with us, and he walked with us a little ways, and none of the officers seemed to care. None of the officers remember the guy. I can't find anybody who remembers this man. He prayed with Sherri and I before that infamous reporter thing that first Monday morning, and he looked me in the eye, and he said, "Whatever you do, remember to lift Jesus. Put Jesus first 'cause God's going to use this."

And that's what we did. She said her little thing that I thought was so eloquently written about Annabelle and having the community pray for us, and I'm not used to all those reporters throwing those microphones at me, but as I spoke that morning, I heard his words in my head, "Lift Christ." And we did. And now, ever since, all these testimonies coming in 'cause they see the mercy and grace of God working.

I would like to say that I would've lifted Christ anyway, but how much more blessed am I that I had that man remind me 'cause right then, my mind was topsy-turvy.

Dr. Dobson: Well, you'll meet him in heaven someday.

Frank Pomeroy: Amen.

Sherri Pomeroy: To attest to the spirit in our church beforehand, Carla, who is no longer with us, was our youth leader, and the Thursday before this Sunday, we have been told that her lesson was on forgiveness, and one of our little young men. He was about 12, 11 or 12, just kind of mouthing off. He was one of our little bold little guys-

Dr. Dobson: Like 12-year-olds do.

Sherri Pomeroy: Yes. Like 12-year-olds do. He said, "So Miss Carla, you say we're supposed to forgive somebody. What if somebody comes in here and shoots up our whole church. Are we supposed to forgive him?"

Dr. Dobson: Actually asked that question?

Frank Pomeroy: The week prior.

Dr. Dobson: Beforehand?

Sherri Pomeroy: Thursday. Four days before. Four days before.

And, Carla said, in true Carla form, "Absolutely, we are to forgive him." And that was her heart, and that was the heart of our church.

Dr. Dobson: Have you done that?

Sherri Pomeroy: Yes. I'm kind of like David said, the shooter is dead. That's a compartment in my brain I don't think I have visited yet because we have so much to process. I'm still dealing with losses.

When I get to that point. Yes. But I don't think I'm there yet, in a place where I can.

Frank Pomeroy: Dr. Dobson, if I could throw in to what she's saying right there is it's been six months, however, within that six months, there are some people that still in the very embryonic stages of their grief cycle of how to deal with this, and there are others of us that are way further down that line, so it's hard to get a focus as to where is the grief sitting in Sutherland Springs as a community 'cause you have folks in the entire gamut there from one end of the gamut to the other as far as their healing process right now.

And because of that, people will give you different answers, such as Carla went on to tell that young man, "If one life is saved because of mine, it's all worthwhile." Now, how many lives have been saved just through our memorial and through the church? Not counting how many exponentially around the world that have rededicated and/or started going to church.

Dr. Dobson: Let me ask you a facetious question. David, I know now having gone through this and knowing it was senseless and that a guy tried to kill you, you hate him inside, and you're sorry that he's dead because you'd like to have done the job. Is that true?

David Colbath: No. Early on, I've said all along that I don't hold any animosity toward him. He's dead. How can I do that? I was left here, I believe, to carry a torch with God's word in everything, everywhere, and whatever I do.

Dr. Dobson: And you're speaking in many places now?

David Colbath: Yes.

Dr. Dobson: And the Lord has given you an opportunity to testify to this something called love that's inside of you.

David Colbath: Absolutely. Men's groups, church ... I actually turn a lot of things down because I get kind of wore out, but I'll be in Florida in July at two different churches.

Dr. Dobson: Well, I want to know what you're going to tell those people that are going to be listening to you that our listeners here need to know about. What's the primary message you'll bring?

David Colbath: Well, I think it's two-fold. Anybody that brings up the word God, has got to be able to back something up with what they say. Yeah, there's a God. Where is this God? What does this God do? What is he for?

And my God is my savior. I believe he saved me that day to do what I'm doing on your show right now and what I'll be doing, hopefully, for the rest of my life.

I may not ever be able to work again, so I need to be doing something, but the spiritual savings that he's done for me will be eternal life with him. I don't mock that. I don't take lightly in saying that. It's my true belief, what I know, and what I believe.

Dr. Dobson: David, there have been all these other shootings in schools and just senseless killings that have taken place. When you hear about a Parkland, Florida school where so many people were killed or in Las Vegas where, I think, 50 people were killed, and many others wounded, what feelings do you have?

David Colbath: Well, I think it's a good question, especially coming to me. We've had mass shootings in the last 30 years, way to many, and I'll be the first to tell you that. The news reports them, and sooner or later, it goes away, and another one comes up. The news reports it.

I think that's given myself a very calloused feeling about these shootings. What this shooting on our end has done for me, when Parkland shooting came, I went right back to our setting and our shooting. It just took me right back to it, and the same thing with this recent one in Texas also, Santa Fe, the high school there.

So, on a personal basis, what it's done to me is it's open up a word that I really didn't even understand until now. We've used it all the time. I have empathy, and of course that includes sympathy, but now, I know how they feel. I know the pop, pop, pop they're hearing, what it does to your body and your heart and your soul and how it scares you.

Dr. Dobson: Has anyone suggested that you or the others have had PTSD?

David Colbath: Oh absolutely.

Dr. Dobson: The flashback occurs.

David Colbath: Sure. I've had a counselor tell me I really don't have PTSD, and then I've had counselors tell me I do, but I was in for a checkup on one of my wounds, and my doctor, he says to me. He says, "David, how's your PTSD?" And I literally looked at him and said, "I don't have PTSD." And he looked at me, and he says, "Oh, you're going to be the exception to the rule. You're going to be in a war zone, no way to defend yourself, and get yourself shot up, and you're just fine. Everything's fine."

And I said, "Well, what are some signs of it?" And of course, he gave me some signs of it. Some of the signs are lack of sleep, cold sweats while you're sleeping, can't sleep, can't fall asleep for nothing, even through medication. I've had all that.

Dr. Dobson: Sherri, do you?

Sherri Pomeroy: That's something-

Dr. Dobson: PTSD often involves flashbacks, depression, disability, unable to get your life together and to go on and work, great anger, intense emotions of all sorts.

Sherri Pomeroy: I think I'm probably lagging behind there because the first few months, you've got to understand, we were such a small church, we didn't have any employees, so Frank was the only full-time person there, so the task was left to us to do all of the day-to-day things on top of getting truckloads of mail every day, so I immersed myself in helping at the church, and we were at the church for the first four months pretty much 24/7.

Dr. Dobson: Were you really?

Sherri Pomeroy: And I think that probably slowed my progression down. I didn't have time-

Dr. Dobson: You couldn't afford to become disabled yourself.

Sherri Pomeroy: Right, and I think that's what saved me, God keeping me busy through helping others, through seeing the survivors come out and praise God, through seeing these letters come from all around the world. All of these things, knowing that people ... The millions of cards we got, the thousands of emails that said we're praying for you-

Frank Pomeroy: Amen.

Dr. Dobson: Amen.

Sherri Pomeroy: I think those things held us up. Sometimes, those were the only things holding us up because I didn't know what to pray for several months. The scriptures tell us that the Holy Spirit will groan for us and make intercession for us, and I know that those intercessory prayers held me up because I couldn't pray. I didn't know how.

Dr. Dobson: The rest of that verse is "With groanings that cannot be uttered."

Sherri Pomeroy: For me.

Dr. Dobson: Pastor, I've sure you've been asked this question before. Do you believe churches should arm themselves in this kind of violent atmosphere that we're experiencing in America today.

Frank Pomeroy: I believe that it needs to be done intelligently. There's a passage of scripture. It says first to pray and then to set a guard at the gate, and we are to do that, I believe. God is our number one entity that we need to put our faith and our trust in, but he also gives us a directive and a common sense as to how to look after ourselves as well.

Therefore, I believe that there needs to be trained safety response in place and people in place to make sure that your flock is protected. If you know that the sheep are inside and the wolves are circling the encampment, yes we pray. We know Peter said that he's looking to see whom he can devour, and if there's a physical tangent out there, then we need to put a physical barrier between us and him.

Dr. Dobson: Right here in Colorado Springs, we have a church by the name of New Life Church, and it may be the biggest church in town, and a shooter came in there and killed two women as I recall in the parking lot, and if it had not been for a volunteer guard on duty to bring down that shooter, there could have been 20 or 30 more that died there.

Frank Pomeroy: Absolutely.

Dr. Dobson: Why do we lock the door at night?

Frank Pomeroy: That's right.

Dr. Dobson: We have an obligation to protect ourselves and our families.

Frank Pomeroy: That's absolutely true, and that's what I explained to my guys. We've studied a really good book by Tim Rupp, a pastor in Idaho, but it does a lot of safety organizational things, but what we focus on, and what I've told my guys, whether they're outside, whether they're over by the nursery 'cause I keep people over by the nursery as well. We've got radios now that make sure there's intercommunication amongst all the men. Our job is to share the gospel, but we are also to protect the flock, and therefore, it's our wives and our children that are a part of that flock. They are the barriers that God is going to utilize to keep that flock safe.

Dr. Dobson: Yeah, I'm absolutely convinced that one of the roles that God gave to men is to protect their own families.

Frank Pomeroy: Absolutely.

Dr. Dobson: And to those who are in their care.

David Colbath: Dr. Dobson, I'd like to say this. Just use the United States as an example. Prior to about 1865, if you were west of the Mississippi, we had plenty of churches. I can guarantee you didn't go into church without your gun. Something could happen. Everybody brought ... And they didn't leave them in the back before they came in. They carried their gun in.

And I'm with my pastor. If someone's got training, and they're in a church, I, by all means, think that they should be protecting-

Dr. Dobson: How about schools?

David Colbath: Pastor Frank and myself were with the governor of Texas, Governor Abbot, in what was supposed to be a round-table meeting, but there were too many people, so we were all seated, and the consensus with those kids, just about to a T was they wanted more armed personnel, not security, but police always at the school, and they wanted their teachers that were qualified to carry, and they didn't want to know which teacher was carrying.

And every idea that somebody came up with besides carrying a gun was, somewhere or another, was shot down. Said, well, we're planning on getting cameras, so we can watch people die? That's exactly what their response was.

Dr. Dobson: Well, you will remember the man who came in, blood thirsty man, and shot 20 second graders, one at a time, just executed them. Boy, don't you wish there had been an armed guard there.

David Colbath: Just one person.

Dr. Dobson: Don't you wish that teacher had known how to use a gun.

David Colbath: I can't tell you this by fact, but I can tell you what I've seen. The last three shootings, Sutherland Springs, Santa Fe, and Parkland, they were all cowards, and I would venture to say, all the other ones are too. What else would you be if you're shooting unarmed people. As soon as any type of-

Dr. Dobson: Babies, for Pete's sake.

David Colbath: Absolutely. As soon as any type of confrontation comes their way, they're running, dropping their gun, giving up, or shooting themselves 'cause they are pure cowards that do those kinds of things.

So, any type of armed confrontation needs to be met with armed confrontation, and I do believe that we will see less and less of it. Why doesn't anybody go into a police station with a gun? Because everybody's got guns in there. So, they're not willing to attack that, but yet all our schools are gun-free zones. Of course, the guy that's going to attack them knows there's no opposition.

Dr. Dobson: They're probably people listening to us right now who strongly disagree with what we're saying. They don't want guns in schools. They want it to be a gun-free location, whether it be a university or where there are two-year-olds. If you had a child in that school, I'll bet you, you would want that armed person.

David Colbath: Absolutely.

Dr. Dobson: There prepared to bring them down.

David Colbath: Those that don't want armed teachers and armed personnel in there, then you're going to tell me as a school district or whoever you are that you don't want people that are armed protecting our kids, then you protect them. You show me how you're going to protect them. Your way is not working. Gun-free zones, only people with guns that are bad come through there. So your way's not working.

Frank Pomeroy: I would just like to throw this out there as well. We had a contingency plan at Sutherland Springs. We have people who were concealed-carry holders that were armed on Sunday mornings in our church, but we need to also remember that God is the great choreographer, and he choreographed it where all of us who normally would have a side arm were not there that day at the church, so it is God who makes the final stand. That's why, if he doesn't want the firearms in there, he'll make sure they're not there.

However, unless he says otherwise, then we should be taking every implement that he has given us, and every tool in our arsenal should be there to protect the sheep and share the gospel.

Someone once asked me, didn't I feel as though it was wrong, and what would I say to those who felt it was wrong to ever utilize a firearm in the church, and I said that firearm didn't do any damage. It was the person holding it. It's a machined piece of equipment just like the machined pieces of equipment in emergency rooms save lives. If you choose not to use this one to save lives, then why would you choose to use these to save lives? They're just machines.

And like David pointed out, there's a reason why you never see shooters at NRA conventions or policeman's balls or where all the good old boys are sitting on the back of the trucks back there. You don't see shooters there because they know there's armed people that will stand up to them. They're going to go to soft targets. Just as he pointed out, they're cowards.

Dr. Dobson: You feel the same way, Sherri?

Sherri Pomeroy: I do. I'm glad to be protected by the people at our church that do carry.

Dr. Dobson: Well, there are many more things related to this incident that we could talk about. I appreciate you all opening yourselves and talking about it. David, thank you for speaking as you do.

Frank Pomeroy: Yes, amen.

Dr. Dobson: And Frank, you and Sherri are also speaking, doing what you can to help people cope with what is just really a sinful, immoral world. The violence that's out there is like nothing I have ever seen, and you know, I remember when I was a kid, we would take off on bicycles at 12 years of age, and we'd ride 20 miles out to a lake and spend the whole day. We'd get back at 5:00. Nobody worried about us. The violence just was very, very rare, and we've gone a little bit crazy in this country, and we do need a revival. Would you agree with that?

Frank Pomeroy: I would agree with that, brother, and if I could say one more thing. To bring that revival, what we see in Southerland Springs is our hope is not in ourselves, it is in He who is greater than he who is in of this world, and we are seeing, after this tragedy, blessings after blessings.

David Colbath: I just wanted to reiterate something about myself and the other survivors. The thing that's happened to us, when I go speak at places, I try not to spend but just a few minutes on the tragedy itself, and then I try to turn that tragedy into exactly what the community has become.

I don't know how many baptisms we've had this year, but we've probably 11 or 12?

Frank Pomeroy: Yeah, or more.

David Colbath: That's what we're seeing in our community and in our church.

Where I come in on this is real simple. I have a platform now to get someone's attention. Man, it was tragic. It was terrible. It hurt. It still hurts. I have pain. Never go away. All that stuff is true. It is, but if I concentrated on all that, then I wouldn't be doing the will of God. I know why I was saved.

My hands weren't working for a while, and I told someone, "I don't need a set of hands to talk about God." I know I was saved to bring God's word. What kind of community would we be if we were just mad? If we were just mad-

Sherri Pomeroy: And David has the same heart as do most of our survivors. We don't call them victims. We call them survivors. Our survivors that are still attending church, our worship team is made out of 80% survivors from that tragedy. They're worshiping and praising God.

Dr. Dobson: That's a testimony to me.

Frank Pomeroy: Amen.

Dr. Dobson: Before we close today, I would like to ask two things. One is there's a lot, a lot of people out there listening to us. Hundreds of thousands of people listening. I ask them to continue to pray for you all, that the Lord will take this message throughout the United States and internationally if that's his will, and he is blessing you, and I pray that he will continue to do so because you have something to share, and that something is love.

The second thing is if I ever get to South Texas again, you'd let me come to your church.

Frank Pomeroy: Absolutely.

Dr. Dobson: I would love to hug some of those people. This has been an inspiration in the midst of tragedy. I don't know how in the world you mix those two, but the Lord has a way of doing that, and thank you all for being with us. My voice is funny today, but I think people can hear past that scratchiness and hear the love that you guys came here to share. Thank you.

Sherri, any last thing? You're crying. Is there anything last thing you'd like to say?

Sherri Pomeroy: I'm inspired by our survivors. I wasn't there. I lost my daughter and a lot of friends, but these guys like David, Julie, Chris, John, so many of them, all 26 of them. I can't name them by heart, but God knows we pray for them every day. They are my inspiration. They went through hell and came back praising God. They are my inspiration.

Roger Marsh: Well, we hope you've been inspired by the stories that Frank, Sherri and David have shared and their unbelievable faith throughout this tragedy.

Again, we ask you to remember all the survivors and members of First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas in your prayers and ask God to continue to bless and heal that church body.

Learn more about their church or ways you can support them by visiting today's broadcast page at DrJamesDobson.org.

Thanks for listening to today's broadcast, and be sure to join again tomorrow for our special July 4th program. It's a very patriotic and moving program that you will not want to miss, so be with us right here for the next edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk.